Trade Effects of a Fixed Rate System in East Asia

Trade Effects of a Fixed Rate System in East Asia
Author: Mizanur Rahman
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 78
Release: 2015-07-06
Genre:
ISBN: 9781514831359

Global trade imbalance against China as well as East Asia is an outcome of 'globally integrated business strategy of multinational corporations,' which has led to the development of production networks in East Asia. As an outcome, economic interdependency in East Asia has grown even stronger in relation to its rapid economic growth. It has also been associated with increasing factor mobility and business cycle synchronization across countries within the region. This led me to conjecture that East Asia was an optimum currency area. Nevertheless, the countries have independent national currencies and conduct heterogeneous exchange rate and monetary policies. This provides the setting for this research. This monograph empirically examines if the actual policy environment relative to the optimal choice, in presence of an external shock, can significantly affect East Asian production networks and thereby the pattern of regional trade integration. While the actual policy environment is characterized by heterogeneous exchange rate regimes of East Asian countries, the optimal choice is assumed to be a currency area arrangement whereby the countries either share a single currency or have their exchange rates fixed to one another. It is thereby an ex ante analysis of a potential institutional arrangement. The conceptual framework and empirical methodologies are designed in order to draw valid inference on both the short-run dynamics and the long-run equilibrium relations between exchange rates and exports. It has been applied in the context of China, where final stages of assembly and exporting have become increasingly concentrated. In doing that, the study uses a unique Chinese trade dataset that distinguishes exports that are produced along the production networks from those that are not.

Exchange Rate Regimes in East Asia

Exchange Rate Regimes in East Asia
Author: Masahiro Kawai
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 588
Release: 2004-08-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134351925

There is a deepening debate in East Asia about the prospects for common exchange rate arrangements, even including the formation of a common currency in the longer term. This raises a complex set of issues and this volume provides a detailed yet comprehensive examination of key issues in the debate. It looks, for example, at the nature and extent of linkages in East Asia, in terms of trade and foreign investment, finance, labour, and consumption, investment and output. It examines how the exchange rate affects various aspects of economies. And it critically analyzes various proposals for currency regimes for the region, including floating exchange rates, basket pegs, and currency union.

Toward an East Asian Exchange Rate Regime

Toward an East Asian Exchange Rate Regime
Author: Duck-Koo Chung
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2007-05-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0815714181

East Asian exchange rates have become a global flashpoint. U.S. policymakers blame artificially low Asian currency values for global imbalances, including America's ballooning current account deficit. The solution, they argue, lies in some combination of greater exchange rate flexibility and the appreciation of Asian currencies against the dollar. Asian officials recognize the need to let their exchange rates rise, but they fear that would hamper growth and cut sharply into the value of their dollar reserves. Toward an East Asian Exchange Rate Regime offers a timely and comprehensive analysis of the resulting debates, drawing on expertise from China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States. The introduction reviews the issues at stake, sketches a variety of proposed exchange rate regimes, and discusses comparisons between East Asia and the West. Subsequent chapters examine the connection between global financial imbalances and East Asian monetary cooperation, China's potential role in regional coordination, the relationship between monetary and trade integration, and different paths toward regional cooperation. Authoritative yet concise, this is an essential primer on East Asian monetary integration. Contributors include Gongpil Choi (Korean Institute of Finance, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco), Masahiro Kawai (University of Tokyo, Asian Development Bank), Kwanho Shin (Korea University), Yunjong Wang (SK Institute), Masaru Yoshitomi (RIETI,Tokyo), and Yongding Yu (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences).

Exchange Rate Systems and Policies in Asia

Exchange Rate Systems and Policies in Asia
Author: Paul S. L. Yip
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2008
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9812834516

This important book comprises insightful papers on lessons learned from some major exchange rate and monetary experiences in Asia, exchange rate crisis management in Asia and choice of exchange rate systems in Asia. Originally published in the Singapore Economic Review, Vol. 52, No. 3, 2007, it deals primarily with the exchange rate systems and policies in the three largest economies in Asia: China, Japan and India. It also contains a paper on Singapore''s exchange rate system, whose success could make it a role model for other small open economies. Notable contributors include Ronald McKinnon and John Williamson, among others. The editor is the original designer of China''s latest exchange rate system reform.

Currency Cooperation in East Asia

Currency Cooperation in East Asia
Author: Frank Rövekamp
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2014-07-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3319030620

This book explores the opportunities and limits of currency cooperation in East Asia. Currency issues play an important role in the region. The Asian crisis of the late 90s was rooted in deficient currency arrangements. The Chinese RMB is not freely convertible yet, but policymakers in China nevertheless aim for a more international role of the Chinese currency. The recent change of direction in Japanese monetary policy caused a drastic depreciation of the Yen and led to warnings against a possible “currency war”, thus demonstrating that currency issues can also easily lead to political frictions. Most trade in and with the East Asian zone on the other hand is still conducted in US $. Against this background different modes of currency cooperation serve the goal of smoothing exchange rate fluctuations and capital flows. They are an important element to promote financial stability and to reduce the transaction cost for foreign trade or investment. The contributions of this book analyze the environment and design of currency cooperation in East Asia and their effects from a macro-and microeconomic viewpoint.

Trade Patterns and Exchange Rates in East Asia

Trade Patterns and Exchange Rates in East Asia
Author: Mizanur Rahman
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 96
Release: 2012-06-30
Genre:
ISBN: 9781514305942

In his Testimony on June 23 2005 before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, remarked, "The enhanced integration of China into the world trading system is having notable effect on Asia's trade with the rest of the world and on trade within Asia. After having risen rapidly through the 1990s, U.S. imports from Asia excluding China have flattened since 2000. This has occurred as production within Asia has evolved, with the final stages of assembly and exporting to the United States and elsewhere becoming increasingly concentrated in China." The phenomenon is called East Asian production networks whereby production processes are fragmented across national borders in the region. This development is undeniably related to the global imbalance problem. Several studies showed that the build-up of an unsustainable payment imbalance in the U.S. was substantially mirrored in the reserve accumulation by East Asian countries including China notably. These studies predicted that unless "coordination and shared responsibility" led to a gradual adjustment of it, the world economy would move toward a major crisis. Some authors even predicted an imminent collapse of the U.S. dollar, and a global financial meltdown. A global financial crisis indeed began in 2008. The crisis has accompanied a prolonged economic slowdown across the developed and developing world. An unwinding of the imbalance has progressed but in a disorderly way. The moral of this research is that real exchange rate changes and redistribution of world expenditures will continue to play key role in the process of international adjustment. However, our focus would be on how it would affect East Asian exports within the region and between East Asia and the rest of the world. We apply an empirical framework that essentially incorporates the fact that production within Asia has evolved. The consideration has an important implication. It is that exports by country are recorded on a gross basis rather than as value added and therefore the domestic value added is only a part of the gross value of the exports. An appreciation by the exporting country per se will affect only the domestic value added but not the gross value. But a joint appreciation of countries supplying intermediate goods will increase the dollar cost of intermediate goods imported into the exporting country from the rest of Asia, which represents a significant share of the gross value. This was the conjecture of Alan Greenspan. He argued that such a coordinated exchange appreciation would have larger effect on East Asian exports. In fact, East Asian exchange rates are now on a path of real appreciation but in an environment of no explicit coordination. The question is how changes in intra-regional real exchange rates will affect trade along the production networks and final exports from East Asia to the world. This study defines two channels of this effect. The first is the production linkage effect through fragmented value chain and the other is the competitive effect. A real appreciation of one East Asian country against the others will imply an adverse competitiveness effect but a favorable linkage effect. We further examine in this research the evolving trade patterns of East Asian countries. We do it by analyzing composition as well as comparative advantage of East Asian exports by stages of production and across geographic locations. The purpose is to see how production specialization has evolved across the core and peripheral countries within the region. We conduct the analyses for all East Asian countries and over 1985-2008 period. They include Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan comprising the core region and China and seven ASEAN countries comprising the peripheral region. The ASEAN countries are Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam.

Economic Interdependency and Exchange Rate Flexibility in East Asia

Economic Interdependency and Exchange Rate Flexibility in East Asia
Author: Mizanur Rahman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 11
Release: 2009
Genre:
ISBN:

This paper examines if exchange rate flexibility adversely affects trade integration of East Asian countries in general. The study focuses on China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. These countries pursue fixed, floating and intermediate regimes respectively. The hypothesis is that since the countries jointly organize East Asian production networks and conduct vertical intra-industry trade (VIIT), the impact of exchange rate flexibility would be negative irrespective of their exchange rate regimes. The results validate the hypothesis. The findings imply that East Asia rather than the domain of any national currency is an optimum currency area.

Monetary Policy in East Asia

Monetary Policy in East Asia
Author: Marvin Goodfriend
Publisher:
Total Pages: 30
Release: 2007
Genre: Banks and banking
ISBN:

The paper identifies and evaluates consequences for monetary policy of five features of East Asian development: export orientation, integrated regional trade, bank-dependent finance, the potential for persistent trade surpluses, and the aggressive accumulation of international reserves. The case for a flexible exchange rate is made in terms of the New Neoclassical Synthesis (NNS). NNS logic indicates why fluctuations in "export optimism" create problems for the sustainability of a fixed exchange rate. Cooperative credit policy in East Asia is discussed by analogy to a credit union. The paper outlines problems for monetary policy created by bank-dependent finance in East Asia. A two-country NNS model indicates that a revaluation of the RMB against the dollar is likely to exert little effect on the US trade deficit, although it should help control inflation in China. The paper argues that China can adopt a flexible exchange rate in a few years with modest reforms of its banking system. Finally, the paper considers various reasons for the accumulation of international reserves in East Asia.--Author's description.

The Impact of Real Exchange Rate Flexibility on East Asian Exports

The Impact of Real Exchange Rate Flexibility on East Asian Exports
Author: Mizanur Rahman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009
Genre:
ISBN:

This paper estimates the impact of intra-regional real exchange rate flexibility on East Asian exports. The hypothesis is that the impact would be negative for East Asian countries regardless of their exchange rate regimes. The results validate the hypothesis. The findings show that for Chinese exports the long-run effect is as much as that of a real appreciation of renminbi. By contrast, for Japanese exports the effect is three times larger than that of a real appreciation of the yen. The findings imply that a regional currency basket mechanism would lessen the adverse effect of exchange rate flexibility and engineer a collective exchange rate adjustment for resolving the global payment imbalance against East Asia.